I need some tips on setting up VPS

[donpetru]

Dmacleo, I understand you, for a moment I believe that is a deficiency of the host or host issue. I already tired... :rofl:

[Dmacleo]

yeah its rough trying to prove it (or rule it out is maybe better description) and work around it.
I do think nginx should have helped but recently I had seen some here (are a few posts) having issues with php_fpm, however I am not versed enough in it to know. was hoping Elly would pop back in and maybe explain that issue.
I have good luck with varnish since its easier for me with my current htaccess setup but its not something that would work right on your setup due to limited ram.

if it were me I would ook for different provider, even if they don't run xen vps there are resellers who do a good job not overselling. I just left one that was great to work with, I went dedicated so I can run some video scripts w/o messing vps up but it was not due to quality of service I got.

[Elly]

Not sure about why Apache is faster than nginx, if anything nginx is supposed to be more lightweight and faster.

Being on a VPS server I would be more inclined to think the issue is the VPS because conditions are unexpected (due to neighbours) so testing it on a higher quality VPS would test this theory.

The only difference I can think of is with nginx+fpm, nginx is sending all requests to fpm processes and not processing everything itself (as opposed to Apache); but because I set up using sockets, I don't think this is a major contributor.

After disabling 'mod_rewrite' in ACP the site was still slow, so that rules out nginx rewrite.


I did not have time to check SQL queries due to time constraints.

[Dmacleo]

seems to me I had seen some posts here over last few weeks about fpm and socket connections, not sure if that helps or not.
sorry I just cannot remember specifics.

[donpetru]

Reproduce here what I said in messeger. Unfortunately I bought from alvotech, just two months ago, a package with a 1GB VPS located in Germany for one year. Meanwhile I looked webhosting market and found in Romania a few offers (but somewhat expensive). Some colleagues told me that it's better to choose a hosting solution in Romania for most of my site visitors are from Romania.

It remains to see what is the best option: a hosting in Romania OR one in Europe. So far I have chosen one in Europe, specifically in Germany, which apparently was not the best choice (although not entirely believe this). So, looking for something closer to my country to gain speed and keep it at an optimal level even when traffic is high.

But the site works "pretty well" in alvotech with the observation that: the access time is to high (in seconds) if you're on this page:
http://www.tehnium-a...php?/page/video
and then click the menu on the "Forum"? How long to load page "forums" to you (in seconds)? In my case about 10 second.
But again, when I have CentOS and kloxo or Debian + ispCP Omega, I don't had this problem, from above. Then access time was don't longer than 3 seconds. Why ?

If I could solve this problem, it would be perfect. I would use a alvotech period. Maybe someone can help me in this regard!

[Christian M.]

are you seeing a lot of the users are searchbots?

you know google/baidu/bing, etc.

if so maybe locking them to a really bare theme with no hooks/etc may help?

if they are normal users then this does not apply.

I ran over a year on a zen based vps with 768mb ram w/o these issues (and that was with cpanel installed) so I am thinking anything you do is just overcoming a crap host and you'll always find yourself having to deal with this.

just my opinion though.

You 100% need to block Baidu and Yandex

[Dmacleo]

LOL I actually opened them up for a few days for a cheap load test :)

[donpetru]

Until now, Gary's findings, it seems my VPS was not configured properly. Gary recommended me to reinstall all VPS or buy / install a VPS with cpanel.
Now I don't know what to do. I already tried about 5 different configurations on the current VPS (four configurations of me and last set of user Elly). I have not much option. :cry:

[Grumpy]

Been a while since I read this post...

I just took a look at your top.
You are reaching a limit, badly. Your %wa is at >7%.

And something's wrong... like there's a memory leak or something. Possibly with your application, possibly with os/service/etc. Can't pinpoint with given. Or I'm seeing across multiple OS reinstalls... lol


But before you even reinstall OS, I kind of have a suspicion that your host kinda really sucks...
Get yourself an ioping and see what you get after turning off your website for a sec. Got a feeling that'll answer a lot of things.

----------------- edit ----------------
In case you're confused.... http://code.google.com/p/ioping/

wget http://ioping.googlecode.com/files/ioping-0.6.tar.gz

tar -zxvf ioping-0.6.tar.gz

cd ioping-0.6

make

make install


then run

ioping .

-------------- edit 2 ---------------- For some reference... crappy VPS o' mine

--- . (simfs /dev/simfs) ioping statistics ---

35 requests completed in 36560.3 ms, 18 iops, 0.1 mb/s

min/avg/max/mdev = 0.1/55.9/1419.7/236.2 ms

decent vps o' mine (at least right now)

--- . (simfs /dev/simfs) ioping statistics ---

35 requests completed in 34594.2 ms, 223 iops, 0.9 mb/s

min/avg/max/mdev = 0.2/4.5/21.4/6.7 ms

very busy SSD o' mine

--- . (ext4 /dev/md1) ioping statistics ---

30 requests completed in 29625.6 ms, 3001 iops, 11.7 mb/s

min/avg/max/mdev = 0.2/0.3/3.0/0.5 ms

[donpetru]

I turn off nginx and then I run test - If my VPS with 1GB RAM from alvotech result:

--- . (ext3 /dev/mapper/vg1-vs3003) ioping statistics ---

37 requests completed in 37485.2 ms, 28 iops, 0.1 mb/s

min/avg/max/mdev = 0.1/35.2/308.4/68.7 ms

I tried again:

--- . (ext3 /dev/mapper/vg1-vs3003) ioping statistics ---

35 requests completed in 36952.8 ms, 13 iops, 0.1 mb/s

min/avg/max/mdev = 0.2/74.1/1140.3/202.7 ms

--- . (ext3 /dev/mapper/vg1-vs3003) ioping statistics ---

30 requests completed in 32106.4 ms, 11 iops, 0.0 mb/s

min/avg/max/mdev = 0.1/90.7/1948.2/346.1 ms

So, alvotech VPS is crappy VPS ? :sad:

[p4guru]

ouch 35-90ms average time and up to 1900ms max for random disk i/o isn't good at all !

[donpetru]

From the latest findings, it seems I have to go back to the apache configuration with more RAM or need to buy another VPS more powerful.

Now I don't know what to do with the VPS current package. I paid until 'May' next year. Now to see what alternatives there are. I'll buy one VPS test package for one month.

By the way, anyone knows where to find cheap managed VPS package?

[Gary.]

Been a while since I read this post...

I just took a look at your top.

You are reaching a limit, badly. Your %wa is at >7%.

And something's wrong... like there's a memory leak or something. Possibly with your application, possibly with os/service/etc. Can't pinpoint with given. Or I'm seeing across multiple OS reinstalls... lol

Yep,

The originally setup went horribly wrong, To be honest unless your willing to pay someone a lot and have them reconfigure it for many many hours, The cheaper way is a fresh install.

The disc wait was also very high, I lost connection over 4 times in a hour period so the host is heavily overloaded I assume.

[Dmacleo]

so this can be summed up....bad vps.
if prepaid for a year that sucks but if its cheap its not a total loss.
can be used to learn linux, use as remote ftp if wanted, while site is on a good vps/server.

[Gary.]

Just backup your website, download.

Re install OS on the VPS, I would use cPanel - Then import your website.

[Grumpy]

So, alvotech VPS is crappy VPS ? :sad:

Sure seems like it.

From the latest findings, it seems I have to go back to the apache configuration with more RAM or need to buy another VPS more powerful.

Now I don't know what to do with the VPS current package. I paid until 'May' next year. Now to see what alternatives there are. I'll buy one VPS test package for one month.

You could ask your host to transfer you to another node. Show your ioping as proof that the server is overloaded on disk.

By the way, anyone knows where to find cheap managed VPS package?

Not allowed. Try WHT.
But, I can say that, of all the quality VPSes I know of, none of them are cheap.
VPS is an interesting market. Those who're on VPS are often clients who grew too large to be on shared hosting anymore, which is ~$10/month. So, when you see a vps for $10/month, there's something clearly not right here. At a similar pricing point, they must either oversell lot more or start loosing money. So, a happy ending just can't happen. Alvotech is just too low priced to provide a financially viable quality experience.

The disc wait was also very high, I lost connection over 4 times in a hour period so the host is heavily overloaded I assume.

Ouch...

so this can be summed up....bad vps.

Bad vps & bad setup (according to Gary).

[donpetru]

Thanks for all help.

Gary, you tell me to use cPanel? But that cPanel is not free (finally, I pay a license for a month to see how it works)? And who guarantees me that after I install cPanel site will be accessed much better? To try ... is not a bad idea.

Grumpy, is a good idea to ask the host to transfer me to another node. I'll try that.

Dmacleo, I could use the current VPS to learn something about VPS. Is not a bad idea. But first I will try to squeeze as much performance from the current VPS.

I still think it can do something good with current VPS, even more because the only issue that bothers me is just time to refresh the forum index page ( about 10 seconds) and big access time (8...15 seconds) to IP Content pages. Please look:
www.tehnium-azi.ro
Until sunday to leave the site in the form which is now and if I can't to do anything, then I will exchange VPS or I will install a panel with apache.

[donpetru]

I solved this part, quote (see red text):

the only issue that bothers me is just time [color=#FF0000]to refresh the forum index page ( about 10 seconds) [/color]and big access time (8...15 seconds) to IP Content pages

I made ​​index page loading time value of the forum to under 3 seconds or in other words:

Exec. Time: 5.6157 ---> Exec. Time: 0.6157

A quite acceptable value. The main culprit in big time loading forum index pages was hook: IP.Content block in Sidebar 1.0.2 but and other modules such as IPB Calendar.

Now we have to solve the second part of the problem: big access time (8...15 seconds) of IP Content pages. I tried to grab in the cached IP Content pages but IPC blocks on the right side bar does not properly update data (such as Last Forum Posts). After that, the large number of queries on ipc page is a big problem (more than 80), problem can hardly be solved. I'll try to implement the recommendations from here:
http://community.inv...-ipc-html-page/
maybe I can fix something.

So, it appears the fault above does not belong entirely VPS soft/hardware!!! :smile:

[Elly]

MySQL is dependent on disk I/O, hence by removing the amount of queries/hooks you're reducing I/O and reduce load time, same effect can be seen if you enable Performance Mode

I'm not sure what's bad with the nginx config. If you could post here what doesn't look right would be great. I'm using a similar set up on my test VPS/dedicated server with no problems?

[donpetru]

I ask the host to transfer me to another node and the answer is that:
unfortunately we can not offer a node transfer. The current used node is not overloaded.

Now, with all dialogue this topic, you want to tell me as a good a VPS is one VPS where 85 queries run in less than a second, and not ten seconds like in my case? But what the other web pages on my site that requires less than 20 queries are opened too quickly ?

And another thing. I tried to remove some blocks IPC until the number of queries has reached approximately 45. But in this case web page loading time is about the same. Then, I tried to get down to 20 queries as they exist in some forum pages. In this case, the web page load time decreased by about 25%, almost insignificant.

The idea that: I wanted to point out above, is that, was not the same during loading of the website?

Or, why the during the execution time of the IPC page is much higher than the execution time pages of the forum, which is running the same number o fthe queries?

[Elly]

Donpetru,

I suggest you take suggestions from us and just save yourself the trouble and get a better VPS or a better shared host (former better sice it's easier to manage), most if not all of your problems will be resolved.

Apache runs PHP slightly faster than nginx+fpm, but on a non-overloaded host/server the overhead is negligible. This is not the case for your site, possible host node is amplifying slowness.

Overloaded can apply to different areas. As told by others and me, your I/O is bad. CPU may also be subjected to capping, and I took a look at your host node CPU, it's old (4 core 2ghz)

Installing cPanel on your current VPS won't mean it will run fast. Sure you will be back to using Apache which is slightly faster than nginx+fpm, but it's not gonna be your solution.

Just use this VPS as a test VPS and get a new host, you'll find most issues will become resolved by itself and less time fixing nonexistent issues :)

PS: your PHP/nginx setting are not stock, and are customised to run smoothly on a 'normal' 1GB (xen) VPS.

[donpetru]

Elly, thanks for the response. I'll try another VPS and I'll come back in the next weeks with other findings.

Thanks all for help.

[donpetru]

I continued use CentOS with nginx (set up by user Ely from here).

I tried to send some bulk e-mails and noticed that e-mails are sent hard (I setup 15 emails per minute), than if I was on shared hosting with Cloud Linux and Apache. Also, e-mails are sent with a delay of up to 24 hours. Why? I tried to run the activity of sending e-mails from "System Scheduler" but activity works within seconds after pressing the option "Run task now". But why work so little and not continuous?

Can anyone tell me how to fix this problem.

[Grumpy]

I continued use CentOS with nginx (set up by user Ely from here).

I tried to send some bulk e-mails and noticed that e-mails are sent hard (I setup 15 emails per minute), than if I was on shared hosting with Cloud Linux and Apache. Also, e-mails are sent with a delay of up to 24 hours. Why? I tried to run the activity of sending e-mails from "System Scheduler" but activity works within seconds after pressing the option "Run task now". But why work so little and not continuous?

Can anyone tell me how to fix this problem.

I'd suggest you to stop bothering the configuration of sending mails from a vps and just get a mail service like amazon ses. It's dirt cheap and solves a freaking lot of mail problems, especially for a vps as lot of vpses end up in some blacklist or another easily due to abusive customers.

[donpetru]

Thanks for the response.

On sending e-mails, I think I was looking for another alternative. Indeed, I use VPS for sending e-mail is a pretty risky (risk to be my VPS IP blacklisted).

But now I think is something wrong with task Send Bulk Mail. I try run manually the task and after send 450 emails, then is showing next error:
An error occured with the SQL server:
mySQL query error: UPDATE ibf_bulk_mail SET mail_updated=1344162339,mail_sentto=465 WHERE mail_id=49
This is not a problem with IP.Board but rather with your SQL server. Please contact your host and copy the message shown above.
What does the above error mean?